NAME

PDF - Library for PDF access and manipulation in Perl

SYNOPSIS

  use PDF;

  $pdf=PDF->new ;
  $pdf=PDF->new(filename);

  $result=$pdf->TargetFile( filename );

  print "is a pdf file\n" if ( $pdf->IsaPDF ) ;
  print "Has ",$pdf->Pages," Pages \n";
  print "Use a PDF Version  ",$pdf->Version ," \n";

  print "filename with title",$pdf->GetInfo("Title"),"\n";
  print "and with subject ",$pdf->GetInfo("Subject"),"\n";
  print "was written by ",$pdf->GetInfo("Author"),"\n";
  print "in date ",$pdf->GetInfo("CreationDate"),"\n";
  print "using ",$pdf->GetInfo("Creator"),"\n";
  print "and converted with ",$pdf->GetInfo("Producer"),"\n";
  print "The last modification occurred ",$pdf->GetInfo("ModDate"),"\n";
  print "The associated keywords are ",$pdf->GetInfo("Keywords"),"\n";

  my (startx,starty, endx,endy) = $pdf->PageSize ;

DESCRIPTION

The main purpose of the PDF library is to provide classes and functions that allow to read and manipulate PDF files with perl. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is a format proposed by Adobe. For more details abour PDF, refer to:

http://www.adobe.com/

The main idea is to provide some "basic" modules for access the information contained in a PDF file. Even if at this moment is in an early development stage, the scripts in the example directory show that it is usable.

is_pdf script test a list of files in order divide the PDF file from the non PDF using the info provided by the files themselves. It doesn't use the .pdf extension, it uses the information contained in the file.

pdf_version returns the PDF level used for writing a file.

pdf_pages gives the number of pages of a PDF file.

The original library is now splitted in 3 section :

PDF::Core that contains the data structure and the constructor; PDF::Parse that read a PDF from an external file. PDF::Pages that deal with the PDF page tree.

Many thanks to Brad Appleton ( bradapp@enteract.com ) for his suggestions about the module organization.

Constructor

new ( [ filename ] )

This is the constructor of a new PDF object. If the filename is missing, it returns an empty PDF descriptor ( can be filled with $pdf->TargetFile ). Otherwise, It acts as the TargetFile method.

Methods

The available methods are :

TargetFile ( filename )

This method links the filename to the pdf descriptor and check the header.

Version

Returns the PDF version used for writing the object file.

Pages

Returns the number of pages of the object file. As side effect, the PDF object contains part of the Catalog structure after the call ( more specifically, part of the Root Tree ).

GetInfo

  Return the various information contained in the info section of
  a PDF file ( if present ). A PDF file can have :

  a title ( B<GetInfo("Title")> )
  a subject ( B<GetInfo("Subject") )
  an author ( B<GetInfo("Author") )
  a creation date ( B<GetInfo("CreationDate") )
  a creator ( B<GetInfo("Creator") )
  a producer ( B<GetInfo("Producer") )
  a modification date ( B<GetInfo("ModDate") )
  some keywords ( B<GetInfo("Keywords") )

Note: with the current implementation, if the Info object of a PDF was updated one or more times, only the last modification is found.

PageSize

Returns the size of the page of the object file. As side effect, the PDF object contains part of the Catalog structure after the call ( more specifically, part of the Root Page ).

Note: At this development level, you cannot guess the size of a single page. Only the size of the root page is available. Generally, the size of all the page is the same, but this could not be true if, for example, you merge two different document together. =back

Variables

There are 2 variables that can be accessed:

$PDF::VERSION

Contain the version of the library installed.

$PDF::Verbose

This variable is false by default. Change the value if you want more verbose output messages from library.

Copyright

  Copyright 1998, Antonio Rosella antro@technologist.com

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Availability

The latest version of this library is likely to be available from:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/4794/

and at any CPAN mirror